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ranking the beatles’ catalogue: #15-1

At last, friends, we reach the final installment of this series. My Beatles ranking has dragged on for over a year, but now the end is nigh. A great big thank you goes out to those who have followed this project and given me feedback, commentary, and helpful critiques along the way. I hope you find this to be a satisfying conclusion.

15. “We Can Work It Out” (single): A great meal is made up of contrasts of flavors and textures, and so too is great music. Even more than “A Day in the Life”, “Getting Better”, or any other song you can name, the McCartney sweetness and Lennon bitterness complement each other to their greatest effect here. McCartney’s cheery upbeat song might have been a somewhat feeble effort on its own, but then it’s complicated by a Lennon bridge, a small but noticeable tempo change, and even a time signature switch to waltz time. Add the harmonium and an atmosphere that is surely gallic but not gimmicky, and you have one of the band’s finest singles.

14. “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” (Rubber Soul): This track changed what a rock and roll song could do. While Dylan had written about enchanting and enigmatic women before, Lennon combines it with his more melodic instincts. While Dylan’s work also attains a smug temperament that looks down on the women he writes about- especially if they should be so bold to have social pretensions- Lennon knows he’s been outmatched. It’s a better piece for the humility. Moreover, “Norwegian Wood” weds Merseyside to the burgeoning folk music, while also introducing the band’s fan base to the sitar for perhaps the first time. Even Beatles fans might have trouble acknowledging this song as one of the most important of its decade, but it is exact that. It’s true.

13. “Yesterday” (Help!): It’s in the running for the most well-known and well-loved Beatles track and rightly so. Bestowed upon Paul McCartney in a famous and oft-recounted dream, he’s also the sole Beatle performing on the track. I would argue that what makes this song great is its unexpected restraint. Rather than go full-on orchestra, George Martin economizes with a tight string quartet. Rather than wear his heart on his sleeve, McCartney’s vocal performance has surprising notes of wistfulness that keep “Yesterday” far away from an unwanted designation as a torch song. Compare this to its rough Rolling Stones analogue, “As Tears Go By”– a song drenched in strings and with a maudlin delivery unsuited for Mick Jagger’s strengths as a singer. I don’t mean to bash the band’s contemporaries in this post, but it goes to show that even their most talented rivals often failed to walk the elaborate tightrope of the Beatles’ craftsmanship.

12. “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End” (Abbey Road): The thing about Side 2 of Abbey Road is that it’s a bunch of slapdash songs that nonetheless sound absolutely brilliant when strung together. George Martin pushed The Beatles to think in more ambitious terms for their final album and that encouragement is brought to its fruition here. A gentle lullaby transposed by McCartney segues into the anthemic “Carry That Weight” which in turn reprises some pieces of earlier tracks without seeming remotely forced (something nearly every concept album ever has tried and failed to do.) Then- all of a sudden, it’s “The End.” The end of the album. The end of The Beatles. The end of the Sixties. John, Paul, and George exchange guitar solos- something we’ve never heard on record before. Ringo gets a short but sweet drum solo. And it ends in an elegiac note- in the same way that a Shakespeare play might end in a thoughtful couplet- “and in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.” Amazing.

11. “A Hard Day’s Night” (A Hard Day’s Night): It’s the chord that captured a zeitgeist. That opening strum of George Harrison’s 12-string guitar instantly evokes all that was Beatlemania. The screaming, the chasing, the youthful passion– and then to be followed up with urgently mature uptempo rock and roll. Unpeel the lyrics, and it’s clear that this is about a couple cohabiting, and without being raunchy, it’s the most sexually overt of the band’s singles with the possible exception of “Please Please Me.” And brilliantly, nobody was any the wiser. Lennon’s R&B training gives the slightest notes of Isley Brothers or Wilson Pickett in a track that is otherwise emblematic of the evolving Merseyside sound. Add a short but sweet McCartney middle-eight for that necessary contrast, and you have one of the most accomplished of the early Lennon-McCartney songs.

10. “Penny Lane” (Magical Mystery Tour): For years, this was one of my favorite tracks, and I even wrote a parody called “Charlemagne” when I was a teaching assistant for a course on the history of Western Civilization in college. Warm personal memories aside, “Penny Lane” gives us the fine-grained detail of nostalgia where “Strawberry Fields” gives us a hazy outline. For a song about lovingly familiar things, it succeeds because of its unexpected qualities: A piccolo trumpet solo that comes out of nowhere if you haven’t heard the song before. A chord sequence that shifts suddenly to become more dramatic and tense (“the fireman rushes in”). Its detail could be banal if it didn’t have an intriguing sense that all of this everyday life is performative- that one “feels as if” they are “in a play.” It sets the stage for Sgt. Pepper‘s stagecraft that shows everyday life as rich in the psychedelic.

9. “Come Together” (Abbey Road): For a song whose melody line and opening phrase were ripped off from Chuck Berry, it’s remarkable that there’s still nothing like it. Not by The Beatles. Not by anyone. “Come Together” is murky. While most other songs of theirs bounce or preen or jangle or wink, this song prowls. Right down to Ringo’s drum line- which is like nothing else he’s ever done. Paul’s plays his bass on its higher frets with some great melodic playing, and we even get some moody Billy Preston organ in the mix. Who knows what it’s about- there’s the requisite Yoko allusions, and it may have started life as a Tim Leary campaign song, but what it became is a mystery, probably even to John Lennon. But as an ensemble, the band was never better.

8. “Twist and Shout” (Medley-Burns, Please Please Me): If it didn’t actually happen, it would be accused of being too novelistic. A band trying desperately to make it is in the studio. They’re exhausted. If this album flops, they’ll probably never get to record an LP again. They just recorded 10 songs for this debut album and are sucking lozenges. But there’s one more song to get in the can- a screaming, uptempo number that rocks up what had been a smooth R&B track in its original form. That singer gives it everything he has left- he leaves nothing on the table. He risks his larynx–remember, they probably have a show to perform within a day or two- for one take. It’s tricky, because you need to get the guitar solo just right as well as three-part harmonies after 10 hours of punishing work in your studio. The Beatles pulled it off. To this day, you’ll hear this desperate hail-mary pass of a song, a song so good and so fully their own it doesn’t seem like it could be a cover, at weddings, at dances, at office parties. When you listen to this song with your premium headphones and lovingly restored record player, remember that it was made to move, to shake, to be kinetic. And remember what The Beatles had to do for you to enjoy this song.

7. “Help!” (Help!): Perfectly commercial. Utterly confessional. There are so many distinctive touches in this song that we’ve stopped noticing. It was the first Beatles single to prominently feature an acoustic rhythm guitar,. There’s Paul and George anticipating John’s lead vocal line (their close study of girl-group records may have influenced this innovation.) Bold vocabulary choices that were allowed in the song anyway because of the band’s consistent track record of success. (Imagine, say, Gerry & the Pacemakers trying to convince their producer to let them do a song in 1965 with “Self-assured”, “insecure”, and “independence.”) Maybe others could have written a song that presented one’s naked, vulnerable soul to the world in 1965. But nobody except John Lennon could have made it a transatlantic #1 hit.

6. “Strawberry Fields Forever” (Magical Mystery Tour): This song’s greatness works in a number of ways. First- a recording marvel. If you’ve bothered to read to the end of this countdown, you no doubt are aware of how George Martin took two versions of this song recorded at different keys and different tempos, and at John Lennon’s behest that he merge them together somehow, made it work. This is more coincidence than ingenuity– speed a track up, and its key will go up too. But it still adds to the song immeasurably, as though John isn’t on our plane of existence, that indeed nothing is real or can be real. And it also accentuates the song’s voyage of self-discovery. Lennon’s lyrics are evocative but shuffle with a bit of indecision and indifference- “it doesn’t matter much to me,” “I think er, no, I mean, er yes…” before finally arriving at something like self-realization. He disagrees– and has come to a mature understanding of his own mind.

5. “I Am the Walrus” (Magical Mystery Tour): This bonkers, dada-esque track is utter chaos, complete nonsense, and so much of what John Lennon did well. Lennon wavered between writing throwaway nonsense and that nonsense actually being genius. The latter condition is clearly at work here, taking us through the proverbial rabbit hole leading who-knows-where. It’s filled with false turns- including a seeming middle-eight in an English garden that diverts us to another chorus. And it ends with a long, brilliant fade-out, with marching chants, clips of Shakespeare dialogue, and string sections ascending into the long horizon of the fade-out.

4. “Let It Be” (Let It Be): Uplifting and profound, “Let It Be” may be the closest thing to a secular hymn that’s been written in the last 50 years. A hymn should refocus one’s attention, invite singing along, and recenter oneself in solemnity- and that is why “Let It Be” joins a list of Beatles songs that have become true standards. There is a certain irony that this was written during a point where The Beatles broke up over arguments about who their manager should be and how to salvage Apple’s flagging finances, but whatever. Which version is the authoritative one- the single or the one on the “Let It Be” album? The one with the awesome George Harrison solo on the album, of course.

3. “Rain” (b-side): A track this subversively excellent could have only been on a B-side. And if you were curious enough to flip over “Paperback Writer,” you would be richly rewarded. John’s strung-out vocals, backwards effects, Paul’s bouncy bass-playing, and possibly the best drumming of Ringo’s career all come to a head here. It also uses some Indian-style drones, rarely changing chords and dwelling on one big thing: the altered state of consciousness that “Rain” celebrates. It’s not the band’s most well-known song, but “Rain” is nevertheless the band’s finest psychedelic track.

2. “Eleanor Rigby” (Revolver): If “Yesterday” is wistful, “Eleanor Rigby” is urgent and strikingly mature. Here, the string quartet stabs quickly and sharply, making the pain of loneliness almost physically manifest for the listener. Paul writes some of his most engaging lyrics: “face that she keeps in a jar by the door,” “buried along with her name”, “no one was saved.” With religious imagery, a tragic ending in which the song’s protagonists meet only in death, and an unconventional topic–a more platonic kind of loneliness than simply one’s girl leaving you–it shows the band’s evolution, not just as songwriters but as human beings.

“Here Comes the Sun” (Harrison, Abbey Road): And now– our #1 song on the countdown. Maybe you are surprised that it is a George number– but it’s well-earned. The junior partner wrote what is, in my estimation, The best Beatles song. The Beatles’ catalogue was about celebrating the good in life, and an expression of unbridled joy and freedom in the difficult decade of the 1960s. And in that spirit, “Here Comes the Sun” was their greatest effort. It’s acoustic warmth reflects the song’s tone and topic, even as the Moog synthesizer gives us some unexpected elements. Even as the band sundered and their friendships frayed, the band pulled together their magic one last time and pointed the way toward better days ahead.

Great conclusion! And I guess it does fit that a song from the last album the band recorded is at the top.

Isn’t A Hard Days Night about a baby? Or at least that’s what Paul said. The lyrics are different.

Penny Lane (the street) would have had its name changed if it weren’t for the song, after it was decided in the area that people with attachments to slavery not have anything named after them. (Which simply can’t be done in America-We’d have to rename the capital!.)

My first exposure to Help was though a church school end of the year program that reimagined 50’s-70’s songs in a religious context. I can’t help but associate it as such. (I was 4.)

Rain is by far the least famous song on this list, so I guess you earn hipster points for it being at #3.

I remember you said you’d talk about Free As A Bird and Real Love as well as some Anthology tracks after you finished the list, do you still plan on doing that at some point?

I was a little crestfallen that “Come Together” only ranked #9, but then again, 9 out… how many again? Pretty darn impressive. And honestly, our selections were looking for different things. My selection of “Come Together” for the Rock Hall disc set asked specifically, what did the Beatles bring to the table for the perpetuation and evolution of rock and roll, and which song best checks all those boxes? In that sense, it came down to three songs: the one I chose, Help!, and Paperback Writer. Ultimately, you know what I picked.

But you wrote specifically what you were looking for and even reiterated such in your rationale for “Here Comes The Sun.” Still don’t know if I’d have chosen that song, but that’s only because I’ve never taken to creating such a list myself. Either way, tough to argue against.